Address Your Flaws

Keep a journal

This requires the biggest effort, but potentially offers the most results. Epic entries aren’t obligatory, but be honest and forthright. The rewards are threefold: 1) The simple act of writing down pertinent events can prove revealing. 2) Reviewing the entries puts time between you and the event, and revisiting them can lead to clarity. 3) Most importantly, analyzing events that cover a reasonable amount of time can expose patterns in your behavior that you were otherwise unable to discern.

confrontation

Sometimes the ugly aspects of your personality are so dark and grisly that looking at them threatens to turn you to stone. No amount of introspection will draw water from stone.

It is both bold and precarious to bring family and friends into your quest of flaw recognition; it remains, however, typically the more effective route. It can be painful. So, how can you effectively get the most out of your family and friends without feeling like you just got kicked in the groin?

No cheating

This means you. Choose people who are familiar with you, your life or your work, and have been in your life for a long time. These people should not have an agenda, as they are less likely to either sabotage you or simply tell you that you are flawless. A colleague seeking the same promotion, a buddy after the same girl — these people will not help you.

Prepare your subject

Tell them that you need their help in figuring out why you keep failing, in whatever capacity. If necessary, appeal to their ego; tell them you admire their perceptive abilities and that you believe they are uniquely qualified to help you.

Demand honesty

The tough part about demanding honesty is to actually demand it with conviction. The truth is that you really do need to know. Be prepared to hear some difficult truths about yourself. Somewhere inside you have some idea of what your family and friends will say, which should make things easier to hear. Denial is a major obstacle to overcome when ridding yourself of the breaches in your personality.

Frame your questions

Your questions should be specific and pointed, but as free of bias as you can make them. The person you have enlisted to help you should be able to understand the objective without your own opinions or feelings coloring it. For example: “Whenever deadlines come around at work, I turn up the pace and I expect the same from everyone else. Confrontations inevitably follow. Is there something in the way I try to motivate people that actually turns them off?”

Listen to your feedback

If you’re not truly listening to this feedback, there is no point. In undertaking this massive personal challenge, you owe it to yourself to accept these criticisms as opportunities to better yourself, not as ad hominem attacks. If you’re told that your ego generally doesn’t match up with your accomplishments, the biggest mistake you can make, and the best way to perpetuate the problem, is to deny it. Accept the critique at face value, and don’t let it shade your opinion of the person that you have enlisted for help. You brought them into this, you asked for the truth, and you got it. Now, take their suggestion as an otherwise undiscovered gem and work to make it shine.

seal your cracks

The day you stop searching through the dark corners of your identity is the day you become stagnant. There may be virtue in the ability to say: “I am what I am, and if people don’t like it, too bad,” but you run the risk of concluding that you have somehow reached personal perfection.

Pride is the mother of all flaws, responsible for leveling men and civilizations throughout all human history. Take a page from that book and start sealing the cracks in your personality while you still can.